Collie crash victim Georgia Moloney breaks silence after judge hands Benjamin Byrne-Quinn minimal sentence

When 23-year-old Georgia Moloney went out in Collie to celebrate her friend’s birthday one spring evening in 2020, she had no idea that night would change her life forever. In an awful turn of events, she ended up the victim of a horror drug and alcohol-fuelled rampage. Last week, after learning the man that caused her life-altering injuries will spend just two and a half years behind bars, Georgia felt completely let down by the justice system. “The judge said that the accused destroyed my life,” Georgia said. “But he hasn’t got any punishment at all.” On October 15, 2020, Georgia and her friend Alexis “Lexi” Tate got a lift into town to celebrate Lexi’s 18th birthday. It was going to be a quiet Thursday night with friends at the Crown Hotel. A scuffle broke out on the other side of the pub, with the man who started the fight kicked out and the pub shut down just before 11pm. Outside, Georgia and her friends leant against the wall of the hotel, chatting about whether they should kick on somewhere else or call Georgia’s mum, Greta Moloney, to drive them home safely. “All of a sudden, I just saw these lights coming at me,” Georgia said. “I’ve just pushed Lexie on my right, and one of the other girls got pulled out of the way by one of my other friends. “The next thing I remember is looking down and there’s just blood everywhere.” What Georgia saw were the tail lights of a Toyota Hilux being driven by Benjamin Lawrence Byrne-Quinn, a 33-year-old business owner in Collie. He was one of the two men involved in the brawl earlier in the night, which spilled out on to the street. With drugs and alcohol in his system — police later recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.138 — Byrne-Quinn got behind the wheel of his car and reversed at speed into the group of people outside the Crown Hotel. The ute crushed Georgia and Alexis against the front wall of the hotel, the brick wall buckling from the impact. “I remember sitting on Riley’s lap with him putting pressure on, Dylan pulling off his jumper to put down as an absorption,” Georgia said of how her friends cared for her at the scene. “I remember telling Riley to tell my mum and dad that I love them, because I knew at that point in time that I wasn’t going to make it.” The next memories Georgia has are from three weeks later in the intensive care unit at Royal Perth Hospital. Greta had rushed to the crash site when she heard her daughter had been injured. After 30 years as a nurse, treating countless emergency-room traumas and crash victims, nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to witness. “I’ve seen a lot of trauma, but to see my own daughter lying on the pavement with that amount of blood — I couldn’t even understand what had happened at first,” Greta said. She went into “nurse mode”, helping paramedics in the ambulance on the way to hospital as they performed emergency medical treatments. Her adrenaline-fuelled responses crumbled when Georgia was placed in the rescue helicopter. “When we put her on the chopper, my thought was that we’re never going to see her again,” Greta said. It was homicide detectives who interviewed Greta and Kim Moloney that morning, no one thinking Georgia would make it through the first 24 hours. The crash broke several of Georgia’s ribs, fractured her spine and pelvis in multiple places, ruptured her bladder and bowel, and stripped 80 per cent of the muscle and skin from her abdomen. The team at RPH called a code blue as soon as Georgia arrived, doctors later telling Greta and her husband Kim that Georgia’s was one of the worst trauma cases they had ever seen where the patient actually survived. Over the next seven weeks Georgia underwent 16 major repair and reconstruction surgeries. During one of the last of these, surgeons took two grafts from Georgia’s left thigh to create enough skin to finally close her open abdominal wounds — nearly two months after the crash. For nine weeks Georgia breathed through a ventilator via a tracheostomy tube in her throat, and had to be fed through a tube in her neck. When she finally left the trauma unit to a regular ward on Christmas Day, 2020, Georgia’s intensive rehabilitation included learning to sit up, roll over in bed, and even to eat and speak again. It took five months for her to learn to walk again. Over the following six months family and friends from Collie made the trek to visit Georgia in RPH, then at Fiona Stanley Hospital. On learning she was an avid Dockers fan, Georgia’s favourite AFL player David Mundy and midfielder Connor Blakely visited her in hospital. She returned home to Collie on her 25th birthday on March 30, her family giving her a blue staffy puppy which Georgia has named Mundy. There is rarely a moment Mundy is not by her side. “She will never be able to travel alone again,” Greta said of her travel-loving daughter. “Even if she can have children down the track, she’d never be able to carry them around the house because she can’t walk without a stick. It’s all those sorts of things that have been robbed from her.” There are at least three more reconstructive and skin-graft surgeries on the cards for Georgia. The Moloney family are selling their much-loved family home to buy a house with no internal steps that Georgia could trip on. The family had to purchase a new car with a modified left-side accelerator so Georgia can drive using her slightly-less impacted left leg. A black belt in taekwondo and an accomplished swimmer, Georgia can’t even enjoy her favourite sports anymore — even a small impact or fall could kill her. Georgia feels cheated that Byrne-Quinn has been able to live and work in the South West. Despite the cannabis and alcohol found in his system at the time of the crash, he kept his licence and has been able to drive while awaiting trial. On June 20, Byrne-Quinn was sentenced to five years in jail by the Bunbury District Court after pleading guilty to two counts of omitting to do an act as a result of which the life, health or safety of another person was endangered with intent to harm. The sentence was five years for Georgia’s injuries, 18 months for Lexi’s, running concurrently. Byrne-Quinn will be eligible for parole in February 2025. While Georgia’s split second decision to push Lexi away spared her from more serious injuries, she still suffers ongoing trauma from the crash. The fact the sentences will run concurrently — not consecutively — came as a major disappointment for the tight-knit family friends. They say it “failed” to take into account the full impact it had on then 18-year-old Lexi. “Before Monday, we didn’t set our hopes very high,” Greta said. “So many cases lately, have had minimal sentences that haven’t reflected the extent of the crime, or the the trauma that’s been caused. So we weren’t very hopeful of a big sentence. “With the charges laid against him — he was facing a 20-year sentence — but he’s out in two and a half.” Through all of this, Georgia has remained determined to fight. She fought for her life, fought to walk again, and fought be able to read her victim-impact statement aloud to the court — the first time she has been able to speak about the crash. “It’s not fair at all,” Georgia said. “It’s five years out of his life, but I’ve got to suffer for the rest of mine. “There is no justice in our legal system.” Moving forward, Georgia wants to do something to make it easier for victims to navigate the legal and medical systems. “I would love to see some sort of change within the system itself,” she said. “I don’t want somebody else to go have to go through how hard I’ve had to fight. “If I could make it easier for even a couple of people. You can’t change the past, but you can try and fix the future.”

Collie crash victim Georgia Moloney breaks silence after judge hands ​Benjamin Byrne-Quinn minimal sentence

Collie crash victim Georgia Moloney breaks silence after judge hands Benjamin Byrne-Quinn minimal sentence